"Don't Make Me Think" Book Review

"Be consistent." 

Those two words encapsulate the book's message. 

 As someone who is pursuing a career in sports media, I have challenged myself to write for the viewer when I'm anchoring and also write for a reader when I'm writing a web article. To most people, this seems the same. However, those are two completely different forms of writing. From reading Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think, I realized that like writing in sports media, it is important to have a website catered to your target audience. 

Krug's book outlines how to develop a strong website. My biggest takeaway from his book is that his principles transcend beyond running a site, but falls align with almost anything related to sports media.

 For my blog, here are my key takeaways:
1. Omit Needless Words
2. Consistency
3. Accessibility

Omit Needless Words 
Krug quote from The Elements of Style, "Vigorous writing is concise," resonated strongly with me.  Especially on web pages, many articles fill a viewer's screen with an excessive amount of words. It is more efficient for me as a web writer to make each sentence count and to storytell in brevity. This will allow me to captivate my audience and maintain a solid viewership. I realized I made the mistake of "happy talk" in my initial blog post that he cautions his readers about committing when starting a blog. I understand his reasoning for omitting this section from blog writing because it offers no useful information for the reader.

Consistency 

To gain loyal followers, I must be consistent with my format, content and publication date. Moving forward, I plan to create a template of my blog post layout that I will use to organize my posts each week. In doing this, viewers will know what to expect in each blog post. In addition, I will post what my next topic will be at the end of each blog post so viewers can anticipate my next post's content. Also, I will post my blog posts each week on the same day, so viewers know when new material will be released. Especially as I am aiming to get more attraction, I hope these steps will help develop a strong viewership base.

Accessibility 
I enjoyed Krug's section Accessibility because it is essential to have a website that is both visually appealing and user-friendly. I am eager to employ his tactics in my blog and personal website. While a lot of his advice was primarily about coding and design layout. I plan to transfer this idea onto this blog website by making sure my posts are easy to find and access. People are more likely to continue reading my blog if they are able to navigate it. I had a few friends take a look at my portfolio and blog website and they provided useful feedback about the improvements I could make on the site.


Overall, I thought Krug's book was easy to read and an excellent guide for someone looking to build or enhance a website. This book presents the viewer's perspective to the website builder. While this book was written years ago, I am looking forward to enhancing my blog and portfolio website by utilizing his tactics onto my site.

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